More new words...

Cambridge has been hit by days of "freezing fog". Freezing fog feels like tiny icicles are constantly falling on you as you move through air that is basically frozen in place - you can't see more than 50 feet, your bike lights reflect back at you ominously, and it is absolutely bone-chillingly cold and damp. Freezing fog, despite its wintry beauty, is my idea of hell.

Another new experience that I feared might resemble another of Dante's stages of hell is Clare Hall's First Telephone Campaign. Our Development Director (read: college fundraiser) is my friend, and I got tired of refusing her requests for me to join the Call Team. (She's a professional fundraiser for a reason - she's impossible to say no to.) So for the past week, we 15 Clare Hall students and fellows have been hitting (Skyped) telephone lines all around the world.
I've called a retired academic in Sri Lanka (who informed me that Sri Lanka is a very poor country and its retirees don't get pensions), a former chancellor of a branch of my mom's university, two people whose work I've cited (omg), a poet in Iceland (who responded to my introduction by saying [insert Icelandic accent] "Are you aware of the current economic situation in Iceland?"), a historian in Australia (who studies the "anthropology of food" by analyzing ancient recipes to see how they reflect social values!), a classical archeologist in Cambridge (who is currently featured on the BBC homepage for her work in Pompeii), and many other amazing characters, among tons of wrong numbers and no-answers and a few "slammers" (who hang up immediately... the only ones for me have been Americans! Surprise.). Clare Hallers are everywhere, doing the coolest things!!
It's also amazing to sit with the 15 other callers, 12 of whom are not native English speakers, and listen in as people try to follow the incredibly complex instructions we were given over TWELVE HOURS of training. Telefundraising is a very well-developed and well-researched field, which maybe I should have known but I really had no idea. We each got a huge binder of information about the college (as if we didn't know about it already...) and two booklets of What To Say In Every Possible Situation. Yikes.
Of course we also had to learn the lingo: you call "a prospect", introduce yourself, "bond" by chatting about mutual interests (8-10 minutes), gather "feedback" by asking them what they think of the college newsletter and events calendar, "check details" meaning see if their address etc are right in our database. Then comes "The Case For Support" when you outline the funds we're raising money for (i.e., Student Support (which pays for student bursaries), a new fellowship position in the humanities, and Music Art & Sport (I don't tell anyone about that fund - gotta keep our priorities straight! :) ). Then, finally, after 10-11 minutes of suspense, you "Make The Ask." The Ask is completely scripted and you get in trouble if you don't follow the wording. If all goes well, then you get to take the prospect's credit card information, thank them lots of times, hang up, and then get your reward of a Kinder Egg (a chocolate egg with a toy inside! Today I got a plastic ring with the Polish football team's colors and a stamp inside it that says CZESC, which my classmate said means "hello" in Polish). Phew. Then you add tons of info about the person to the database, so that the college knows what they're doing and how many kids they have and how they feel about the current "ConDem" government (as one prospect called it! :) Those of you who aren't up on British politics, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party are sharing power in England right now and most people think it's a disaster.). I shudder to think what Clare Hall's file on me says...
Even though it can be tedious and makes you feel like a jerk when people are irritated that you called, it's been really interesting too, and makes me proud to be part of this incredibly diverse international community of scholars. AND we broke £80,000 today!!

I'm in three of these photos - can you find me? :)
http://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/index.php?id=38